All about the food we eat at home, pack in our lunch boxes, and try everywhere else…. And feel it's blog worthy!

A box of shredded wheat cereal with no sugar added lay in the cupboard. No one dared eat it as a cereal as it tasted like cardboard soaked in milk. A bag of salad leaves (spinach, chard, arugula) and no croutons inspired the conversion of the cardboard into something special. Once toasted with some olive oil and chili flakes, it transformed itself into a better-than-crouton avatar. It packed flavor, crunch and oh yeah….a whole lot of fiber to this salad. Along with the leaves and better-than-croutons the salad has buttery toasted pecans, radishes, orange and seasoned with sesame oil and OJ. We all skipped the sandwich and went for seconds of this salad for lunch.

After enjoying a Sweet Beginning before the day of the Harvest Festival, it was time to enjoy the reaping of the harvest itself, so to speak 🙂 . This meant the traditional pot of sweet rice pudding aka Pongal. The creaminess of this rice pudding can be enjoyed without guilt as it comes from small lentils called moong dal. The lentil is slightly roasted and boiled along with rice in a mixture of water and low-fat milk. Pressure cooking speeds up the process. Once it is cooked to a soft mass, it is sweetened with jaggery (brown sugar is a good substitute) and cooked until the sugar is melted and the pudding achieves a sticky consistency. Adding a little melted ghee (clarified butter) while cooking prevents the pudding from sticking to the sides of the pan. It is then seasoned with nutmeg and nuts and raisins fried in clarified butter. Served hot and it instantly warms the belly on a cold winter night.

This is the time of the year when we celebrate the Harvest festival in India. It is also the beginning of a New Year. Celebrations include bonfires the day before the festival to symbolize the age-old New Year tradition of “out with the old and in with the new”. And of course something sweet to eat. “Poli” is a flatbread filled with a mix of lentils and jaggery seasoned with sweet spices like cardamom and nutmeg. A real treat for kids and the kid in all of us! These disappeared as fast as I could make them yesterday. The last one was forcibly photographed before being devoured!

One of our absolute favorite dishes at a wonderful Mexican restaurant is a tortilla filled with slaw and Queso Fresco cheese. As we now live far away from this restaurant, we decided to give this recipe a go. Turned out great with our own little spin on it. We first thinly shredded red cabbage, green cabbage and carrot and sautéed it gently with some red onions; adding red chili flakes and salt to season. Charred Poblano peppers; peeled the skin and cut into strips. Then heated up some wheat flour tortillas though the original called for corn. Also in the filling fresh Queso Fresco cheese drizzled with fresh lime juice and cilantro. All the lovely fillings along with avocado and blue corn tortilla chips made for a great lunch last weekend. And now it has become a regular lunchbox menu item; both for work and for school.